


Cold Storage

by glorious_clio



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 17:58:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9283523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_clio/pseuds/glorious_clio
Summary: Kiv Hyperlast finds herself as the last librarian and archivist to what's left of the Galactic Senate. With great power comes great responsibility, especially when the emperor's goons don't know what they're doing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I am an archivist by trade and I had some THOUGHTS coming out of Rogue One. And then some folks in my profession wrote some ARTICLES. We've been talking about long term storage, physical retrieval, portable storage, best practices, HVAC, all of the above. And the only conclusion I've come away with is that their archival practices are bad.
> 
> So what if they were bad on purpose? 
> 
> (thanks to @piedpiper for taking a look at this!)
> 
> Also this is sort of an origin story for "Dark Archives" which I wrote a year ago, but you are under no obligation to read it.

“Oh no,” was Kiv Hyperlast’s first thought on waking up. “Oh no, oh _no_.”

That, and a series of expletives.

She checked the holonet, hoping she was wrong, but knowing she wasn’t. Last night had indeed happened. Sure enough, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine was now _Emperor_ Palpatine. The world had ended, hadn’t it? The Jedi had been ‘eliminated’ and that had ended the Clone War.

Her heart was still beating though (too fast but still beating), she was still breathing (too fast but still breathing). And she had to go to work today. Kiv took a deep breath, closing her eyes, fighting back nausea. After a few moments of a tried and true breathing pattern, she opened her eyes again.

“Well,” she said aloud to her small flat. “If he’s going to work, I should, too.”

Every single cell in her body was telling her to fight, to flee. Instead she pulled on a clean tunic, brushed her teeth, and went to work.

 

* * *

 

The first day was the hardest. Everyone spent the day checking their comms, fully expecting to be fired. Fully expecting the _emperor_ to dissolve the Senate completely. But the day passed in eerie stillness. The calm before the storm. Or perhaps the eye of the hurricane. The senators that were present that day didn’t come down to the library. There were no reference questions, no research to be done. It was like everyone knew this was wrong, but no one had the tools to do anything about it.

All her coworkers looked dazed. A couple of times she found herself with them at the window, staring at the smoking ruins of the Jedi Temple. The Senatorial Chambers upstairs had been damaged too. According to the _emperor_ , it was during the Jedi attack on his life. She didn’t really believe it, not gazing at the Jedi temple. The channels and comms on the holonet that she hung out in were full of confusion. But she had watched the timeline last night, as rumors became fact. The Jedi and the Sith trusted the force; she trusted her gut.

Kiv sat at her terminal and thought about saving records. With another glance at the holonet news, she plugged in her trusty D4M5 documentation droid and downloaded everything she could find on the Clone Wars, the Jedi Order, and Senator Padme Amidala. About Kamino and the Clone Army.

If her boss noticed, she said nothing to Kiv. And when the directive came from the _emperor_ a few days later to wipe the files, they wiped only the access copies.

D4M5, she backed up to her home hard drives and kept in her pantry (cool and dry).

A few weeks later, she started smuggling the hard copies home. It wasn’t bravery, or even a professional mandate. _Beings are more important than things_ , her mentor Windme Cosmicblast had impressed on her. If she was caught, discovered, she’d be killed. But Cosmicblast had also implied that she was keeping her own records on the Empire. Not in so many words, but she had influence. And Kiv wasn’t her only mentee.

 

* * *

 

People began to be let go. Her bosses were fired in a single round. Lor San Tekka seemed almost relieved to be dismissed and he returned to Alderaan a lighter man. Soon, only Kiv Hyperlast was left to run the senate’s library and archives. She was the youngest, freshest from her apprenticeship program. Possibly the empire was banking on her naivete when they promoted her to full time work. A stormtrooper now checked her bag as she came and went in the archives, he was posted outside the door. She tried to talk to him, get to know him, but he seemed reticent. He also never checked D4M5 which would be his greatest mistake.

Even though she worked alone now, she still had a network of people. And the _emperor_ may think he held all the strings, but when it came to data and information, he was holding a tusk cat by its tail. All dictators knew that, that’s why they spread lies, distrust, propaganda.

A few months into this nightmare, she met one of her old masters for tea.

Windme Cosmicblast was a generation above Kiv, but she had already served as president of the Intergalactic Archives Association. She had mentored Kiv Hyperlast when she was an apprentice, and while she had mostly let Kiv figure out her own path, they still met for tea from time to time.

The invitation had arrived at her home by messenger. Handwritten on a piece of paper. Kiv smiled at it.

Wearing dark blue leggings and a new black tunic, Kiv walked to Master Cosmicblast’s flat, leaving D4M5 at home. It was a long way, but she didn’t want to take a cab or even risk public transport. If anything, Kiv was even more sensitive to the records she was leaving. It’s why she had burned the paper invitation.

She knocked gently at her Master’s door and was welcomed in with a hug.

“Did you ever believe I’d be running the Senate Archives, Windme?”

Windme took her cloak, “Yes, I always knew, but I didn’t know it would be under such terrible circumstances. But we’ll get to that. How are you?”

For the first time, Kiv burst into tears. Windme led her gently to an easy chair and tucked her under a blanket. While she was rocked by a storm of tears, Windme took her hand and squeezed it gently. Even through her tears, Kiv was surprised at how much she had needed this, to cry to someone she trusted. Windme had given her permission, and that was all it took.  

Eventually, though, her flood subsided. Wiping her eyes, she tried to apologize. Windme waved it away.  

“I think you needed to do that more than you thought,” she said kindly. “I asked how you were because I wanted to know.”

“I’m scared,” Kiv said quietly. “Scared, but mad as hell. Mad at myself for not seeing it coming, mad at the senate for not stopping this. Betrayal might also be a good word.”

“I think the bulk of the blame falls on Sheev Palpatine,” Windme said bluntly.  

Kiv took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. “Agreed.”

“But anger we can work with. Direct it.”

“But I literally work _for_ him. I’ve been thinking about quitting....”

“Really?”

“Kind of?”

“I’ll make tea,” Windme said, standing quickly.

Kiv sniffed a little and pulled the lap blanket closer to her middle, gazing out the window. Wimdme lived over a little park that was full of small beings playing while their parents watched. It was a working class neighborhood. Shoulders were hunched as if against cold. Kiv recognized that stance - it was the posture of someone trying to duck down out of sight. She took a deep breath and relaxed her own shoulders down, straightening up her posture.

She turned to see Windme setting up a glass teapot and cups. No milk or sugar or tea though, and in a moment, Kiv saw why.  

With a light, practiced hand, Windme rested a Cassius blossom, curled and tight, in the bottom of the glass teapot. She left for the kitchen and returned with a boiling kettle of water.  

Kiv slipped out of the chair and watched as Windme poured the hot water over the tea ball.  Very slowly, very carefully, the heat of the water worked its magic, and the Cassius ball bloomed into a fragrant tea, staining the water around it pink.  

Kiv looked up to see Windme watching it carefully.  

“There’s a metaphor here.”

Kiv’s laugh rang out.

Windme returned the kettle to the kitchen before settling on the sofa and serving the tea. It had a wonderful flavor, not too sweet, perfectly light. As Kiv swallowed it, the liquid seemed to seep into her very soul.  

The Cassius bloom floated gently through the teapot, slowly rotating as if showing off its petals.

Kiv nestled into her chair.  “Now you’ll tell me all the reasons I should stay,” she said frankly.  

“You are one of my favorite apprentices,” Windme said carefully. “I know the decision is ultimately yours. But if anyone has the heart and the stomach for this fight, I think it is you.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Kiv joked.

“It’s not flattery. It’s begging.” Windme set her teacup aside. “You are the only one left in the Senate archives. Palpatine has cleaned out your department in a show of strength. You are the person he has left. Palpatine thinks he can control you, because you are scared you might lose your job or your life, and that is a powerful weapon that you can use against him. You will be the one who trains the archival lackeys he hires. There’s no chance he’ll go for anyone with any training. He’ll want people who don’t know what they’re doing.”

“Sooo....”

“So. My advice is... to train them badly.”

“That’s it?”

“Think of how you could hurt his empire. He’s feeding the masses false information. What if his own base is just as false? If you weaken him now, perhaps others will find those weaknesses. We are all on the outside, speaking truth to power. You are in the position to tell him lies.”  

“How would that help?”

“Think about it. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”  

 

* * *

 

Her first stop was with the communication department. There were still a few folks left that department she trusted. Like her, they were at the bottom of the ladder when all their superiors were dismissed. Like her, Palpatine thought he could trust them for the sheer reason that they were in fear.

Without asking directly, without confirming directly, they built her archival goals into their workflow. Every comm sent or received by the Emperor, Vader, or any of the Grand Moffs invisibly copied directly into a server that she backed up at home and then wiped at work.

They taught her how to encrypt her own records. She reprogramed D4M5 to automatically encrypt on ingest and transfer. She didn’t encrypt the “official” records and no one asked her to.

Of the official records, she documented nothing. Her fingers itched about it, but she wouldn’t let herself leave any records or reports about the work that she was doing. If she was killed tomorrow, she wanted to ensure the next archivist had no idea what she has done with any of the records. It was a sort of Job Security. It was lonely, though. She didn’t dare contact anyone from the profession, didn’t even got to IAA meetings, didn’t renew her memberships. She worked and ate and slept. It looked close enough to loyalty that she was never suspected of anything.

She still brought D4M5 everywhere she went, but programmed him, again, to transfer files when no one else was around. Because he had always been there, no one took any notice of him. No one questioned, and no one ever scanned his memory banks. She was still careful to transfer his files every night and wipe him again.

Kiv started seeing comms about a _Death Star_. Not even in code - the arrogance of the Empire was astonishing.  

“Well this isn’t good,” Kiv muttered when the credit dropped.  

She set up a meeting with her ‘supervisor’.  

“The work of the Emperor is glorious and far reaching,” Kiv flattered him. “I wish to help in any way I can.”

“What did you have in mind?” He was a high ranking officer, and bored with anyone not associated with the military.

“I can help organize data files, transfers, long term storage for any of the Emperor’s great initiatives.”  

“Oh?”

And just like that, she was in. She wished she could tell Windme what she was doing, but she dared not have any contact with any other archivist. Kiv trained the lackeys that were sent to her, teaching them bad, bad habits that did not fit any archival standard.

“Only one copy is necessary, and hard copies are best. It might make it annoying for us to retrieve, but we can’t have anyone hacking into our systems.”

“For that one copy, I recommend magnetic tape. Sometimes the old ways are the best.”

“Speaking of old ways being the best way, I don’t see any need to update the data access ports.”

“Authentication system? For what? Only imperial officers will be accessing these files.”

Her triumph was complete when they asked her to develop an archival facility.  

“Look at me now, Windme,” she thought as she typed up specs. She picked Scarif: a warm, humid planet that would erode her magnetic tapes faster. Rather than put everything underground, she built a giant tower. No access terminals except for the giant dish on top.

“This is going to get me killed,” she thought, omitting any sort of rudimentary safeguards to protect the information. Surely even the Empire would realize how stupid her recommendations were, that she was essentially painting a large target on their archives.  

No one questioned anything. They built it exactly as she wanted it.  

“Oh yeah, definitely organize the files by your code names for them.” It’s not like those ever change.

Kiv Hyperlast toured it once, installed her worst Imperial Officers to run it, and returned to the Senate.

 

* * *

 

She was rather surprised when her archive facility on Scarif was breached - Kiv never expected to see that happen in her lifetime. She didn’t really expect to live through nineteen years of Imperial rule, though. It was gratifying, and the cherry on top was the Empire then _destroyed its own archives_.

The Senate was dissolved the next day.

Kiv whistled on her way home, D4M5 following her all the way. To her carefully curated and protected files. Encrypted and reasonably secure. Especially given that the _Emperor_ had no idea what she had done. She patched herself through the firewall to keep an eye on their communications, just in case.

When the Death Star was destroyed by the Rebel Alliance, she celebrated by locking all of her servers in a secure cold storage facility off planet. She then visited her old master, Cosmicblast. She would know where to send Kiv on her next adventure.

(Kiv left her in charge of her cold storage, she had all her documentation in order, all the encryption keys.)

Windme told her old apprentice to track down Lor San Tekka - he had survived Alderaan and was working for the Alliance. Kiv Hyperlast was in a unique position to help the Alliance and she would wait no longer.

She loaded up D4M5 with the files she thought would be most useful and caught a ship taking her offworld. The weaknesses she had built into the _Emperor_ ’s foundation would now be exploited. She could guarantee it.


End file.
